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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What do cultures use from the mind, in Wilson's account?

2. How many billion people can the earth sustain, theoretically?

3. What does status give a man power to do, in Edmund Wilson's account?

4. What are social scientists lacking, according to Wilson?

5. What does natural consilience connect?

Short Essay Questions

1. In what way are epi-genetic rules cross-cultural?

2. How do the senses function as epi-genetic rules?

3. What is the sign, in EO Wilson's account, that culture is evolving?

4. Where does ethics come from, in E.O. Wilson's account?

5. What is volitional evolution, and what does Wilson say are its effects?

6. What does Wilson say the liberal arts should address?

7. How do social factors influence genetic distribution?

8. What does Wilson say is the relationship between human genetics and the development of culture?

9. What social science does Wilson credit with coming closest to consilience?

10. What social problems does Wilson say are caused by failures in social sciences?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

How does Wilson refute claims by philosophers of individual experience, who say that truth is personal, and that the search for unity of knowledge will always result in self-opposition, as Freud shows is the case in the unconscious? Does Wilson seem to be at war with himself anywhere within the book, or are his ideas consistent with the possibility of unification of knowledge?

Essay Topic 2

The model for scientific work is based on hypothesis and testing, with each discovery creating the need for further testing and further hypotheses and publications--but Wilson describes scientific knowledge as settled and established. Is Wilson overlooking the uncertainty in scientific work and generalizing the results? Does the scientific method itself foster consilience or undermine it?

Essay Topic 3

Wilson writes that economic models of culture can change variables, but keep the remainder--the unique thing that is the culture itself--constant. What is it about economic that Wilson says makes it better suited to our times than sociology and anthropology? What would superiority mean if Wilson were the dean of a university, with power to determine funding for departments?

(see the answer keys)

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